The present disclosure relates to a printer that includes a feeding device for feeding a tape-like print medium and a printing device for printing characters such as letters, numerals, symbols, and the like on the print medium.
Conventionally, there has been known a tape printer for printing letters, numerals, symbols and the like (hereinafter collectively referred to as “characters” unless specified otherwise) on a tape made of paper or plastic film with a print head. For example, the printer described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei 5-177905 can print characters over plural lines depending on the width of the tape. Further, in this printer, at least one character may be specified as a single block, and several blocks may be printed in line along the length direction of the tape. In such a case, a block may include several lines of characters. Line feed and block separation may be specified with respective function keys provided on a keyboard of the printer.
After print dot pattern data for the characters or the blocks is generated and then stored, sometimes, the tape as a print medium may be replaced with another tape having a different width. In such a case, in the above-described conventional tape printer, arrangement of the characters or the blocks for printing is not changed unless otherwise specified by a user and the size of the characters or the blocks is enlarged or reduced corresponding to the tape width.
However, if the size of the characters or the blocks is automatically changed corresponding to the tape width as described above, an unexpected print result may be obtained, thereby sometimes wasting the tape. In particular, if the tape is replaced with another tape with a smaller tape width, there may be a problem that the characters may be illegible because the size of the characters or the blocks is changed to a smaller size. If the user wants the previously set size of the characters or the blocks to be maintained, the user needs to reedit the data after the tape is replaced. Thus, when the tape width is changed frequently, in particular, the user needs to reedit the data each time it is changed, which requires time and labor.